


Kiss it Better

by rhymeswithmonth



Series: Kiss it Better [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, Childhood Friends, Derek Feels, Gen, Hale Family Feels, Laura and Stiles are buds, M/M, Pining, Pre-Slash, Protective Derek, Reunions, Separations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-29
Updated: 2013-02-06
Packaged: 2017-11-27 09:43:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/660491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhymeswithmonth/pseuds/rhymeswithmonth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles at age seven had been thoroughly disillusioned about the notion of healing kisses. It hadn't worked for his mama, despite his dedication to the effort, and hadn't worked since for him. But one day while playing with his new friend Derek, Stiles had fallen off his bike and skinned his elbows, knees and palms badly on the pavement. He'd manfully tried to keep from crying, because Derek was older and would surly think he was a baby if Stiles burst into tears in front of him, but a trickle of moisture had escaped and leaked down his cheek. He'd been sure that it was the end, that Derek, cool, tall, fifth grader Derek with the shiny black mountain bike and best video games would realize that Stiles was just a wimpy little loser not worth his time.</p><p>AU where Stiles and Derek were best friends before the fire. Stiles deals with Derek's four-year disappearance and the events that lead to their reunion. Stiles didn't know about the Hales being werewolves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The guests wait for an hour before finally resigning themselves to having to move along; they have officially used up the allotted time-slot. Stiles drags his feet as they weave through the graveyard, scuffing at the pristine turf with his eyes fixed determinedly on the forest beyond. His father's hand on the shoulder of his borrowed suit jacket guides him away from the row of fresh graves. The others, a small group of friends and classmates, disperse at the parking lot, going to their respective cars with sad murmurs. Dad starts towards the cruiser but stops when Stiles grabs his arm, pleading for just a few more minutes. They sit on a bench and wait.

Derek and Laura never turn up. Dad paces the gravel path with his cell to his ear, talking quietly and seriously with social services. Apparently they had last been seen at around noon, fully decked out in their funeral clothes, in the critical ward of the hospital. They'd requested time alone with Uncle Peter, the social worker in charge of the siblings claimed, and she'd seen no harm in letting them spend a little time with the unconscious man, but when she'd come back from the cafe thirty minutes later they'd disappeared.

Stiles is pissed. He lies in bed that night, an absolute wreck with worry, and fumes at the world. How could that woman have been so stupid to imagine that two teenagers who'd just lost their entire family would be thinking rationally? How could Derek be so selfish to just up and run off without a word? Sleep is not an option, not when he's so tightly wound, so Stiles migrates to the living room and curls up around the phone, waiting for a call that never comes.

The thought of Derek leaving for college had used to terrify Stiles. There had been so many nights that he lay in bed unable to sleep, legs tangled up in sheets from the frustrated thrashing, trying to imagine a world where there were hundreds of miles between them. He tried to comfort himself with the thought of phone-calls and skype sessions, not being able to touch him, to reach out for assurance and be met half-way, it was unimaginable. He thought of his mother and how quickly the smell of her hair had faded from his memory, and found himself struggling to breathe at the notion that he might forget what it felt like to be pulled against Derek's chest and enveloped in the deep, woody smell of his body.

As the months pass by and it becomes clear that the Hales were not going to be found any time soon, Stiles looks back on those days longingly. What he would give now for one phone-call, to be able to log online and chat with Derek for just a minute. He'd settle for anything, one email, a post-card, just the knowledge that even if they were across the country from each other, that Derek was safe and alive.

He dreams that it really is just college, that Derek is living the University life out of state, that he is so busy with classwork and making new friends but still manages to call Stiles every day to just talk. They make plans for the breaks, when Derek flies home early to surprise him by showing up at the school, or arranges for Stiles to come visit and camp out on the floor of his dorm. There's the typical loneliness and jealousy as Derek grows away, finding new friends his own age and begins forging a life for himself away from Stiles, but at least he's happy and healthy and within reach.

The days are bearable for the most part; Stiles trucks on through his classes, throwing himself into the work as a distraction. His grades rocket upward, much to his fathers delight. But there's still the emptiness of his now free after-school hours and weekends, so he tries out for the school lacrosse team. The summers of helping Derek practice apparently paid off some because he makes it on, if only just. He's still clumsy and easily distracted, especially when something reminds him of those lazy games of catch in the forest he often ends up fumbling the ball or tripping over his own feet. On the bench during their first game he talks to one of his new teammates; Scott McCall is better than Stiles, but only barely, so they spend a lot of time keeping each other company on the sidelines. Scott is nice, goofy in a way Stiles can appreciate, intelligent enough to not make him want to shoot himself in the face and he puts up with Stiles' rambling.

It helps, to have a friend. When he's hanging out with Scott he can lose himself in the complicatedly simple world teenage boys. They play video games together, suck at lacrosse together, play cards when they should be doing homework, it's easy. Scott makes it easy. But then Scott has to go home for dinner and Stiles' dad works late, leaving Stiles alone with his thoughts. He starts cooking again, digging out the cookbooks dad had used when his mum was sick and throws himself into preparing increasingly elaborate meals. The more complex the recipe, the longer it takes to cook, the more concentration it takes the better so Stiles' brain can't drift into darker thoughts.

Night time is the hardest. He fluctuates between insomnia and slumber full of dreams that leaves him even more exhausted than if he hadn't slept at all. The only nights that he actually gets substantial rest is after lacrosse practice, when the hours of drills and suicide runs drain him so completely that it's impossible not to pass out as soon as he hits the mattress. He takes to running after dinner, around the neighbourhood until he can barely stay upright. It's unhealthy to push his body to such extremes and he knows it, but so is not sleeping so he makes the choice.

The panic attacks come back with a vengeance; after so long without incident the fits seem to be determined to make up for lost time. The smallest things set him off. Realizes that he forgot to study for a test? His lungs constrict. Dad doesn't get back from the station until the clock hits single digits? He comes home to Stiles curled up in the corner of the bathroom. One time he goes into full-out convulsions in the middle of History because he starts thinking about how horrible Derek was at remembering to wear his retainer and now that his mom and Stiles aren't around to remind him all of those years suffering through braces will go to waste.

His dad helps, when he's around, and Scott quickly learns the best ways to bring him down from an episode. They talk him through it, sit with him, speaking soft words of reassurance and rub his back, low voices gradually pushing through the static to drag him back to reality. It's nowhere near as effective as having Derek there, with his uncanny ability to sense when Stiles was feeling shaky and nip the sensation before it had even begun. They'd honed it to the point when all Derek had had to do was put a hand on his neck, or shoulder or knee, and the suffocating would cease, oxygen rush back and his vision clear. Derek had been able to miraculously prevent the attacks from happening, all that Stiles hopes for now is for somebody to find him before he hyperventilates himself unconscious.

He tunes into the eleven o'clock news every evening and watches it from start to finish, through the stupid stories about water-skiing squirrels and the boring ones about the economy. Every time the hour wraps up without a single mention of the missing siblings from Beacon Hill, he lets out a sigh that is equal parts relief and disappointment. Relief that there were no bodies unearthed, and disappointment that another day has passed without the one miracle that would fix everything. He doesn't miss a single broadcast, not for anything. If he's sleeping over at the McCalls he interrupts whatever DVD they have on, much to Scott's displeasure, if they're at a friends or family members' house for dinner he excuses himself to listen to the radio in the car. Even as the weeks turn into months, and the manhunt is called off, the one year mark comes and goes, and even after the Hale siblings have been pushed off the hot list, their case frozen due to utter lack of any hints to where they'd gone. The town stops talking about it, preferring to let the memory fade and blur, a tragedy of the past. But still Stiles dutifully sits for an hour each night, setting aside his homework, eyes fixed on the television.

His dad keeps an entire drawer in his office dedicated to the Hale case, but it's more out of love for Stiles than any real hope that some new piece of evidence will pop up. Stiles knows this but he's still grateful. He's looked through the contents himself, dozens of times in the weeks following the funeral, scouring the documents in vein hope that they would provide some sort of indication of where they could have gone. He's read every word of the fire-marshal's record of the day of the fire, and the inspector's report afterword. He's overanalyzed each line of the social-workers' interviews with Laura and Derek from the weeks after. There were both of their school files, statements from neighbours, teachers and classmates taken in hopes that somebody would have an idea of where they might have gone. Stiles had given one, of course, rattled off a summery of his and Derek's six years of friendship, managing to fill multiple pages with his rambling. Someone had had to go through it with a highlighter to sort out which information was just useless nonsense about their shared love of dungeons and dragons and which might actually point them somewhere. The drawer remains only a quarter-full for four years.

He decides he loves Lydia Martin in grade ten when she breaks his arm. She doesn't do it intentionally, he doesn't even think that she realizes that she had any part in it at all. Hell, most of the time he's pretty sure she doesn't even know what his name is. It happens one day at a pep-rally and Stiles is with Scott dicking around on the top row of the bleachers while the football team is thoroughly trounced by their rivals. Scott is a bit distracted by the cheerleaders, watching them keenly as they prance and cheer the team to defeat. Stiles meanwhile, has climbed up onto the rail at the back and is entertaining himself by trying to balance there. Since Scott consistently fails as his best friend whenever there are pretty girls within sight, he fails to warn Stiles when a heard of kids comes crashing up the bleacher stairs. It's a group of the 'popular' students, and they have their sights set on the row that Scott and Stiles are currently occupying. They thunder passed, causing the rail to rattle unsteadily, upsetting Stiles' stance. He is just about to jump back down onto the bench when Lydia Martin appears, parking her mini-skirted rear right where he was aiming to land. Stiles jerks back in order to not land on top of the girl, overbalancing and is sent tumbling backward over the rail, dropping four metres to the ground with a sickening crunch and a blinding flash of pain.

Scott panics and runs off to find a teacher, and an hour later Stiles is getting his arm secured into a sling by a stern Ms McCall. School the next day is interesting in that all of a sudden the majority of the student body actually knows his name, as taking a nose-dive off the bleachers is apparently enough to raise him from the depths of unknown to the status of nerdy spaz. So okay, maybe claiming that Lydia herself broke his arm is going a bit far, but it makes for a better story. Lydia is beautiful, secretly brilliant (as Stiles discovers from snooping through student files after a busted house-party that had resulted in the suspension of a good chunk of Lydia's friend circle) she's dangerously witty and way out of Stiles' league. There's even a rumour that she and Jackson Wittmore have a thing going on after hooking up over the summer. Lydia is safe for Stiles to develop a massive crush on for presisly the reason that he'll never have her. He can wax crappy poetry about her strawberry blonde hair and cute button nose all he wants because they are so very different than the dark spikes and strong features that still star in his dreams.

Stiles has no photos of Derek. It was never an issue in the past; why would he need a flat, lifeless image when he had the real thing, vivid and alive every day? Of course, now he regrets every missed opportunity, every walk they'd gone on during Stiles' photography phase in the seventh grade, when he'd saved for months to buy his own digital camera. He'd dragged Derek out at all hours, outrageously early to try to capture the sunrise from the top of the ridge, late at night to stand in a field and fiddle with the settings for hours trying to get a good one of the moon. They had spent so many days out in the forest, chasing after deer and documenting the many wild flowers, it would have been so easy just to swing around and snap one of his companion. He didn't realize just how odd it was until his dad had asked him if he had any that would work for a missing persons poster. Stiles didn't, and neither did the school. Apparently Derek had been out sick for every single photo day in his public school career, had missed lacrosse photos due to 'family matters' and so had his sister. in the end Stiles spent the better part of three days in the station talking to a composite artist. On day two he'd had his first panic attack in years when he struggled to accurately describe the angle of Derek's ears (which he'd always hated). The poster had come out all right, the face was recognizably Derek in the straight nose, dark brows and spiky black hair. But they'd failed to do the shape of his cheekbones justice, and the set of his eyes was wrong.

It's a common line of thought during the times that Stiles has nothing to keep himself busy. He wonders how the passing years are changing his friend. Stiles looks different than he had when the siblings disappeared, a couple growth spurts had left him long-limbed and average height, despite Derek's unwavering conviction that he would remain stunted forever. His face remains stubbornly babyish though, his pixie nose and big eyes promoting many an embarrassing problems getting into 14A movies.

He wonders if Derek has grown just as much, if he would still tower over Stiles like he had for the passed six years. Does he still go wild with the hair gel? Has he grown into the ears that he disliked so much, filled out the long, deer-like limbs that somehow managed to be gangly and graceful at the same time? Has Laura forced him to pluck his eyebrows like she always threatened to?

They let him keep the thin binder of sketches that the police artist had made while trying to get an accurate version for the poster. Each one has something not-right, dozens of different almost-Dereks, and some of them are more recent, projections of what he could look like after a growth spurt or two that the police have knocked out over the years to look like they're making progress. There are a few different versions that ended up on the street, from a slim, hungry version to a stocky one that looks like present-Derek has done some serious weight-lifting. They're stretching, making wild guesses.

In the first semester of eleventh grade, three things happen that drastically change Stiles life.

First off, the Argents moved back to town. They arrive in late august, just in time for their only daughter to start the year off at Beacon Hills high school. Stiles is leery of Allison at first, because when Kate Argent is your relative there has got to be an increased chance of being a crazy bitch. But defying genetics, Allison is great. She's the total package, pretty and smart, funny and nice. Of course, Lydia immediately tries to snatch her up and reel her into her group, but for some inexplicable reason she actually chooses to spend time with Scott and Stiles instead. Or rather, with Scott instead because it quickly becomes clear that the two of them are totally into each other. In no time at all Stiles is playing third wheel to a whole load of PDA.

The second life-altering thing that happens is the appearance of a string of dead bodies around the county. There's a heated debate between experts as to what exactly is killing these people, mountain lion is the popular vote, but there are a few who insist that the remains have been treated in a manner too close to human. The entire police force is putting in overtime and the sheriff most of all. They barely see each other anymore, his dad coming come so late and leaving so early that they resort to communicating through notes stuck to the fridge. One day Stiles stumbles into the kitchen to find a can of heavy-duty mace on the counter and the note had said simply /at all times/. An after-dark curfew is implemented for all underaged citizens, which pisses off most of their peers. Stiles thinks of bodies in ditches and what he'd do if Scott or Allison went missing this time and dutifully makes sure to drive them home by dusk.

And then Scott gets bitten by a werewolf.

This is, obviously, the most important one of the three (although all of these occurances are, in hindsight connected, Stiles doesn't know this yet) It happens in the reserve when Stiles, against all common sense drags him into the woods after the party searching for the other half of the most recent murder victim. It's the first time he's allowed himself to break curfew, because his dad and dozens of other cops are out there tonight, armed and flanked by trained attack dogs. By all rights they should be safe as can be, and if the nearby officers fail then he has his ginormous can of mace to fall back on. But that assessment was performed before Stiles was aware of the hulking monster of lore that apparently lurked in the forest after dark. Safe is a very relative term when the supernatural are about.

It's life-changing, to understate, having to deal with a best friend who loses control of his humanity at the slightest provocation. They flail around in the dark, utterly lost as to the correct way to go about controlling the part of Scott that apparently wants nothing more than to run around naked ripping random civilians to pieces. Adrenalin and aggression seem to be the main culprits in spurring him to 'wolf out' so the key (read: only) part of their plan is to avoid any situation that will excite him or piss him off. Normally it wouldn't have been a problem as Scott is a genuinely good-natured guy with very few negative feelings toward anyone, and since he rarely makes it off the bench lacrosse isn't much of an issue. Until it is. Because Scott is an idiot and Allison shows up at a practice and there's something about pretty females that really eats at a guy's sense of self-preservation. Scott uses his newfound super skills to pull some fancy moves and voila, suddenly Mr McCall has been bumped to first line.

A couple tense half-times in the locker room later and Stiles is sure that he isn't going to last much longer. It's stressful and scary dealing with this shit and just to top it off Scott is thinking about asking Allison to go steady which seriously, now is not the fucking time. He's running on fumes, between the edge-of-seat stress that comes from watching the line of Scott's body for shifting all day, fielding his dad's suspicious inquiries about his recent influx of extracuriccular activities and now helping to cover for Scott and Allison to her overprotective parents. His nerves are stretched so thin that it takes him way too long to realize that he hasn't really thought of Derek in over a week.

He feels immediate and intense guilt which prompts a particularily tear-filled panic attack. He then rushes to the police station and yanks the Hale folder out of its drawer and settles in to read the entire thing for the first time in three years. It takes half the day but it makes Stiles feel a little less useless and shitty to pretend that he is looking for clues that may have been overlooked, to dedicate a day to his lost friend. It lasts until that evening when he gets a garbled call from Scott who seems to be losing it after his date with Allison got a little...heavy. Stiles has to speed in and save the day, banishing Derek from his mind for the night. When he gets home he's too tired to dream. Being a werewolf wrangler seems to be the ultimate distraction.

And then everything comes together in a magnificent collision of worlds, all of the dots connect and all sense of normalcy is thrown to the wind.

He goes to the reserve at least once a week, usually on the weekend, parks his jeep at the roped-off mouth of the Hale driveway, and hikes out to the house. The structure of the building is actually in decent shape considering the fire burned through the entire basement and first floor. The north wall was mostly collapsed and the east side was scorched black but the front of the house was still relatively well preserved. He ignores the signs warning him away and opens the front door with the spare key that has never been removed from under the porch. The key had been hanging there since before Stiles started hanging around; the house was like the official Hale family gathering place, and rather than fashion a dozen keys for all members of the family, it had apparently been simpler to have just the one and leave it out there. Stiles had been let on to it's location in the fourth grade when it became evident that he was going to be spending as much time there than at his own house.

As a kid, Stiles had always loved beach combing. His mother had grown up on the coast so his childhood was full of day trips to Belvedere to see his grandparents and frolic in the waves. He developed a natural ability to pick out the treasures from the tide-line, finding handfuls of agates, colourful sea-glass, pretty shells and delicate seaurchins. After the fire he turned his attention to the house, picking painstakingly through the soot and splinters to find whatever possessions remained whole. There's a shoebox that he keeps up on the still- intact bookshelf in the den that is full of his discoveries. There are a bracelets worth of cheap plastic beads, a bunch of half-melted cutlery, shards of porcelain that had been black with soot when he found them but, when polished turned out to belong to the ornate hip-height antique vase that had lived in the foyer. There's a couple of Uncle Peter's guitar picks, a battered up hotwheels that belonged to little cousin Tanner, the harmonica that Uncle Martin had played so badly that Laura had swiped and hidden under the floorboards in the playroom, a scrap of a grocery list written in Marcy's neat hand. Little tokens that had been missed when the house was cleared out, anything left in decent shape packed away in storage waiting for the remaining Hales to sort through and discard as they please.

He hasn't been in nearly a month, due to monitoring Scott having taken up every waking hour. He goes intending to spend the morning; he's packed a sandwich and several bottles of water in his backpack, and brought his algebra on the off chance that he actually works up the motivation to do his homework. He hops up the steps , kneeling to reach between the planks for the key, but fingers closing on empty air. He frowns and gropes blindly, but the bent nail that it usually hangs on is bare. He tries the knob and finds it locked. Feeling a dull ache in his chest he hikes around back and hauls himself up through the gaping hole where the wall had fallen open.

The can of mace is stuffed in the pocket of his kakis, and he curls his hand around it just in case. Tiptoeing carefully around the holes in the floor he creeps through the ruined end of the house into the rooms that have a slightly more stable foundation that is less likely to send him crashing into the basement. He'd replaced the key last time he'd visited, he was positive, so his whole body is on alert, expecting something to jump out at him from around the dusty corners.

The front room is dim, the merest trickle of light filtering throught the stained-black windows. The house's single piece of furniture resides in this room: an old couch that looks like it had once been robin-egg blue underneath the multiple layers of filth. Stiles had spotted it sitting on the side of the highway last summer and stopped to load it into the back of his jeep to bring to the house to use during his visits. It is a beautiful old thing with wooden armrests carved into abstract deco-style patterns, but it's stained beyond salvation, and the stuffing in the cushions is all but gone. Still, it's a considerable improvement from sitting on the grimy floor.

He spots the shoebox first, removed from its place in the next room and open on the floor. The various trinkets have been removed and lined up neatly along the lines of the hardwood. And hanging down, just visible between the floor and the couch, the toe of a chunky black boot. The back of the couch completely obscures the rest of the person. Slowly, Stiles pulls his cell phone out of his pocket and poises his thumb over the speed dial that will instantly connect to the police line. His father had programmed it in back when he'd gotten his first phone, and insisted that it remain so since. His other hand remains in his pocket, ready to snatch the mace out in an instant. Creeping forward as softly as he can, he moves around the sofa.

The man is wearing a beat-up leather jacket overtop of a faded grey sweatshirt, the hood pulled up over his face. A chin generously covered with stubble peeked out from under the fabric, square and resting against one broad shoulder. He's sprawled loosely across the couch, the leg not hanging over the edge bent uncomfortably in order to fit. His hands are curled around the empty gerkin jar, the kind only Granny Rachel had eaten, cradling it to his chest as it rose and fell steadily in sleep.

He could leave. He could call the police from the safety of his jeep, locked doors between him and strange drifters, they would take him to the station and lock him away for the night for trespassing then send him on his way. He hesitates, taking a step backward toward the door, and with a crash that sounded deafening in the silent house, falls through the floor.

It isn't his whole body, just one foot up to the knee. But it's a second of wild terror and a flash of white pain in his shin as a splinter of wood tears into his shin. He yelps and whirls his arms about in an attempt to stay upright, but gravity prevails and his tailbone is painfully introduced to the hardwood. Cursing colourfully he scrambles to right himself, but pulling at his trapped leg causes an agonizing drag against the raw wound. He gasps and the pain is enough that he didn't hear the clatter of the pickle jar hitting the ground, but not quite enough to block out the sound of the voice saying his name.

The term 'kissing it better' was always thrown around by helpless parents faced with scared children with superficial injuries that they really couldn't do anything about. Stiles' mother had wielded the words effectively for the first decade of his life, smooching away his sores like a pro, dabbing at fallen tears and kissing flushed cheeks. It was the affection that helped in reality, the attention from his beloved mama that had calmed him and made him forget the pain in favour of giggles and cuddles. When she got sick Stiles had still been young enough to believe in the magic of kisses, and had dutifully reported in at the hospital for her daily dose of healing via lips. His mama had played along, always brightening when he came in, putting on a good show of strength so that he kept on believing that maybe the kisses were helping, that they'd beat the cancer together. On the days that she was in too much pain to even pretend, they kept him away, saying that she was sleeping, needed rest, that he could come in to see her tomorrow. Eventually, tomorrow had never come.

He met Derek a month later. Stiles at age seven had been thoroughly disillusioned about the notion of healing kisses. It hadn't worked for his mama, despite his dedication to the effort, and hadn't worked since for him. But one day while playing with his new friend Derek, Stiles had fallen off his bike and skinned his elbows, knees and palms badly on the pavement. He'd manfully tried to keep from crying, because Derek was older and would surly think he was a baby if Stiles burst into tears in front of him, but a trickle of moisture had escaped and leaked down his cheek. He'd been sure that it was the end, that Derek, cool, tall, fifth grader Derek with the shiny black mountain bike and best video games would realize that Stiles was just a wimpy little loser not worth his time.

But Derek, in his seemingly infinite awesomeness, had not only stuck around but gotten down off his bike, knelt beside Stiles and grabbed up his aching hands in his own. That was when Stiles' belief in magic healing was restored because at the press of Derek's palms the burn of his cuts had dulled to a faint ache. He had rubbed up Stiles' arms, and then patted his battered knees to the same effect. As the years went by, of course he outgrew the notion that it was actually a physical process that made any hurts that Derek laid hands on disappear, but it was undeniable that the older boy helped. Whether it was by distraction or if he was just a naturally calming presence, Stiles had no idea.

Now, half sunk through the sitting room floor, somehow Derek was by his side again, hands working at the spot where his leg disappeared to break away the jagged boards and make the hole big enough to slip out of. Stiles sits back and lets him work because he's too fucking stunned to do anything but gape at his long-lost friend, apparently not so lost anymore.

Derek gets his leg unstuck in no time, and the familiar feel of his hands light against his calf, chasing the pain away is too much. His breathing speeds up and becomes shallow, as if his lungs are shrinking in his chest to make room for his swelling heart, pounding deafeningly and far too fast. His skin prickles all over his body, perspiration beads on his palms. But then it's Derek's voice in his ear coaxing him back, gripping his clammy hand to press it against his chest and telling him to breath, breath together. The beat of Derek's heart under his fingertips is strong and even, and Stiles' body automatically latches on and matches the pace. It's not a choice not to, he syncs to the familiar rhythm of the body beside him and the attack abates.

None of the posters had managed to accurately captured twenty-two year old Derek. He is haggard, naturally olive skin unhealthily pale making the dark of his eyebrows, hair and half-grown beard stand out dramatically. Even in the poor light Stiles can see the dark bags under his eyes, the hollows where his cheeks are more sunken than would be considered healthy. All Stiles can think when he looks at him is that he's a thousand times more beautiful than he could have imagined.

Later on he won't remember much of the following exchange, but there's a very high possibility that he bawls like a fool. There is a good chance that a large quantity of tears and snot made its way onto the shoulder of Derek's jacket while his face was pressed there, and he probably babbled a whole lot of sappy things that he'll be mortified about in the future. But no matter how long he may have been away, Derek is an old hand at dealing with his theatrics, and he manages to maneuver them across the room, bearing roughly ninety-five percent of Stiles' body weight alongside his own, and sit them down on the sofa.

They split Stiles' lunch because damn, Derek may have bulked up like crazy in terms of muscle mass, but he still has the desperate look of someone who hasn't eaten properly in days. It's a good thing that Stiles, hoping for a growth spurt, had taken to doubling the size of his meals so he actually has more than enough food to feed them both. He still gives most of his half to Derek, who frowns at him for it but is apparently too hungry to decline and scarfs that down as well.

They should talk, Stiles should yell and rant and demand all of the answers he deserves. Derek should answer and apologize and reassure. They should go together to the station and sit down and give a report and call up Laura wherever she is so that she can come back too and they can close the case for good. They should come and stay in the spare bedroom at the Stilinski house until they sort out their funds and organize a place of their own. But Stiles finds that the questions are dying on his tongue and he just doesn't feel up to shouting. He's so overwhelmed with relief that he doesn't want to ruin it by prying, he figures that he can leave it for the boys in blue to sort out; Derek will tell him when he's ready. He wipes his eyes and leans against his friend, marveling at the changes and the things that are exactly the same. Derek rotates the pickle jar absently in his hands.

He convinces Stiles not to tell anyone. He needs time, he says, to be by himself, sort through the emotions of being back in town before he can face the uproar that his reappearance will inevitably cause. Stiles doesn't like it, but he understands. He leaves Derek the picnic blanket and water bottle that he has stashed in his jeep and goes home. It's a good thing that his father doesn't come home until after he's in bed because he doesn't think that he'd be able to keep the new to himself if he saw him.

He plans to go back immediately after school he next day, maybe even cutting last period to get there sooner. But then he sees Scott at lunch, it's the first time all day since he's taken to riding the bus to be with Allison and they have no morning classes together, and Scott immediately loses it. He shows up at their spot by the pitch, Allison-less for once, thank all higher powers, because she's putting in time with Lydia. Miraculously they're the only two on the field, so when Scott goes rigid half-way across there's nobody to witness it. There's also nobody to save Stiles when his friend lunges forward, clearing the last ten meters in two bounds, and slams him into the turf. It's not the first time that he's felt the brunt of Scott's new werewolf strength, but this time feels different. There's a lot of snuffling and snarling but considerably less trying to rip his throat out. Stiles manages to get him calmed down and out of his face, and Scott tells him that he smells funny.

Stiles tries to defend himself, it had been an exhausting night with a mere couple hours of sleep, and he'd passed up a shower in favour of staying in bed. But Scott shakes his head and explains. According to him, most people smell like prey to his wolfy nose, but today Stiles smells like predator. They have no idea what this means, but the best guess that they can come up with it that stopping to pet his neighbour's dog might have been the cause of the change. Stiles has his doubts; Fritz is a Pomeranian.

But Scott is on edge for the rest of the day. He settles a bit when Allison joins them for Econ, but Stiles can see the tension in his body, the way his fingers are clenched in the fabric of his jeans, just barely able to hold the claws back. He was torn, get the hell away from him and hope that the distance would make it easier but at the same time risk him wolfing out and not be there to help, or he could stay and keep tabs on him even though he seemed to be the one setting him off.

He ends up taking Scott home after third period. His dad is going to be at the station for hours still, so they'll have the empty house to themselves, Stiles will shower while Scott comforts himself with junk-food. First, however, he stops off at the Hale property to drop off a tupperware full of the veggie stir fry that he'd made for dinner last night. He'd purposely made way too much, thawing and adding in several chicken breasts that he would have left out if it had just been him and his father eating. He tells Scott to wait in the car, covering the container with the thermal, police-grade sleeping bag that he'd swiped from the station's storage locker a few years back when he and Scott had endeavored to plan a camping trip, but ended up staying in for a Lord of the Rings marathon. Scott knows that Stiles comes here, knows that he'd been friends with Derek, and knows not to ask any questions pertaining to the whole business.

Derek is in what used to be the kitchen, and is starting to chastise Stiles for not being at school when he freezes. His features tighten, eyes and nostrils wide and lips pressed into a tight line. He comes close, right up in Stiles' personal bubble and grabs the bag out of his hands, depositing it on the counter without even glancing at it. When Stiles tries to explain what was in the container he hushes him and demands to know who Stiles was just with. For a moment in the half-light of the kitchen his hazel eyes look strangely blue.

And then there's a crash from the from of the house and Scott comes barreling down the hall and into the room. Stiles flails at him incredulously, trying to block his view of Derek with his own body, despite the fact that he is about as thick as a flag pole to Derek's sturdy frame. He staggers forward to drag Scott out when he spots the golden hue that his friend's iris' have taken on, and Derek's hand grips the back of his shirt and drags him backward. This turn of event is pretty much a disastrous one, as Derek manhandles him so that he is between Scott and Stiles, legs apart as if preparing to block a football tackle. If only it could be so gentle.

Stiles is yelling a whole lot of nonsense in an attempt to defuse the situation, but he's pretty sure that neither of the others are listening. Scott is shaking, shoulders hunched over in a half-crouch, one clawed hand braced on the floor in preparation to spring. His hairline has migrated downward, features broadening and twisting into a fierce snarl, lips parted to expose the canines that are so obviously not human. Derek doesn't back down and flee like any normal person would, just bends his knees, one hand raised in a defensive position and the other still holding Stiles. He struggles to pull away, needs to get between his friends because he feels moderately sure that Scott won't hurt him, but he looks more than ready to tear into Derek. He pries at the fingers in his shirt in vein, Derek's grip is like a fricking vice.

A horrible grating sound is coming from Scott, it's not a human noise and it fills up the room, echoing so that its amplified and sounds like its coming from more than one person...animal...thing. Stiles is screwed, Scott is screwed, there's no way that Derek will believe whatever lies they come up with, and that's if he even comes out of this alive. It's not looking good at the moment, Scott's amber eyes are full of animalistic fury that is fixed on Derek as if he's the only thing in the room. Theres something else though, terror. His eyes are rolled up so that the whites of his eyes flash on either side of his iris. He looks like a cornered animal, which is bizarre because he is the one who has them, two humans, backed up against the ruined cabinets. Scott seems torn between attacking and running, and Stiles is seriously hoping for the latter. Between growls he is asking who Derek is, snarling fiercely at him to get away from Stiles. Instead of complying, Derek pulls him closer, tight against his back where he can only squirm against his leather-clad shoulder blades and squawk helplessly. This is apparently the wrong move because Scott snaps and throws himself forward, claws extended to swipe and slash.

Over the passed couple months Scott has felt the bite of those wolfy claws a few times. The scratches were never more than that, shallow and clean and fast healing. He's also felt the strength that Scott's supernatural body now possesses; he can easily throw Stiles around a room, into walls and furniture. Nobody on the lacrosse team, or any of their rivals can stay on their feet when Scott decides to come their way. He's seen guys who weigh two hundred plus pounds fall and not get up after a check from the guys, but when Scott hits Derek with the full force of his charge, Derek doesn't drop. He shoves his extended arm forward, catching the worst of the mauling, and takes the hit like a brick wall. Stiles barely even feels the impact despite being presses up behind him, but he does hear the grunt of exertion and the whoosh of air leaving Scott's lungs as Derek immediately retaliates with an elbow to his stomach. His leg sweeps out to hook Scott and send him crashing hard to the floor, and then the hand holding Stiles still finally let's go, but it's too late to do anything. Derek darts forward and jumps on top of Scott's back, pining him face-down to the floor.

And then Derek snarls. It's not like the noise Scott was making earlier, that odd half-human shrieking. This is pure animal, deep and rumbling, building up to end in a hiss. It sends a shiver up his spine, and makes Scott fall instantly still where he lies trapped. When he drops to the ground beside them Derek's eyes are glowing icy blue and it is dawning on Stiles that he now has two best friends who are werewolves.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the very warm welcome to the fandom everyone, I was pleasantly surprised with the response I got to this. So here's another chapter for you all. This one is a very different style, with a lot more dialogue. Enjoy!

Once, for three months in the summer before eighth grade, Derek had gone away to stay with family friends up north in Canada. These friends lived deep in the mountains of central British Columbia, in a community without an official name, grocery store or cell tower.

Ten year-old Stiles had spent the first month sulking. He'd been looking forward to a summer spent roaming the woods around the reserve with Derek, had been planning on asking Granny and Grandad if he could bring him along when he visited them and they would play on the beach for hours a day, and stay up late catching fireflies and trying to see Mars. But when June rolled around and teachers started wrapping up the curriculum, Stiles expressed his excitement to his friend and was met with awkward shuffling, averted eyes.

From the time he was just a toddler, when Stiles is faced with the ruin of his plans, he tends to deal with it by sulking, and boy oh boy could he sulk. His father insisted that he was too old for the petulant pout to be anything but ridiculous, but of Stiles at seventeen refuses to accept that, then there's no chance that Stiles at ten even considered it. He shut himself up in his room for days, evading Derek's attempts at reconciliation very effectively since the middle-school was on the other side of town, and by the time Derek got to Stiles' house he'd already holed up in his bed, nose shoved pointedly in his comics and refused to answer his friend's frustrated attempts to draw him out.

He'd been determined to wait out the two weeks until Derek's departure like that, make it so that Derek would realize that life without Stiles was no fun at all, that going away for the entire summer was a huge mistake. But the days ticked by and while the older boy pleaded with him to just come out already, he never once offered to cancel his plans. It had taken Stiles right up until the day that his friend was set to leave to realize that all he was doing was extending the length of time that he wouldn't be able to see Derek. He ran all the way down to the reserve only to find that Derek and Mr Hale had already departed.

You would think it had been the end of the world with how Stiles bemoaned missing saying farewell by a mere twenty minutes. He'd stood dejectedly on the Hale's veranda, banged his head against the railing a couple of times in self-loathing. After a couple of minutes Laura had come out holding a tray with a plate of brownies and a pitcher of Aunt Kelly's famous raspberry lemonade. Stiles ignored her for about thirty seconds in dedication to his angst, but the scent of the chocolaty goodness, and the thought of the tart tang of the freshly-squeezed lemonade mixed with the wild berries that grew in the meadow out back beat him down. Laura smiled in that all-knowing, older-sister way of hers and sat down beside him on the stoop, neatly folding one jegging-clad leg over the other.

He didn't usually hang with Laura; Derek loved his older sister, but they didn't always get along. When they hung out at their house they sometimes ended up in the same room, watching TV, grabbing a snack at the same time and chatting about school, but Laura was two years older than Derek, and therefore six years older than Stiles, so between the age difference and the fact that at that point in his life, girls were basically aliens, they had very little common ground.

That day on the Hale's front porch, however, Stiles was reminded of the area that their interests did overlap when Laura casually slid a folded piece of paper across the wooden boards between them. On it, in purple cursive, was the address to a postbox in the town forty-five minutes out from where Derek was staying. It was for emergencies only, apparently because their parents wanted the full experience of living removed from all modern conveniences, which was the whole point of the trip. "I'm sure Derry won't tell if an occasional love letter turned up," Laura had smirked at Stiles frantic denial, "Because I don't think I could stand three months of you mooning around like the world has ended. It's pathetic frankly."

So the situation had improved in leaps and bounds as Stiles wrote a five-page apology for avoiding Derek, and another four making up for the days of silence by rambling on about everything and nothing, then when a reply had come the following week, predictably a quarter of the length but nonetheless full of reassurances and disgruntled complaints about the lack of Internet and flushing toilets.

And he found a sort of ally in Laura, and ended up spending a decent chunk of the summer lazing in the grass of their backyard while she read or sketched. He got to know her better, picking up little facts; her drawing for example, which she did all the time. She didn't like to sit idle for any length of time, and carried a miniature pad around in her pocket which she'd pull out whenever her hands were free. She never showed anyone what she drew, like the sketches were her form of a diary for recording but never sharing. Stiles helped her streak her hair with the cheapest home-kit the drugstore had to offer, and she introduced him to the awesomeness that was armature photography, letting him try out her little digital camera. In the end the summer wasn't as horrible as he'd expected it to be, and although things returned more or less to normal by the time Derek returned, he now considered Laura a friend as well.

Six years later Stiles sits crossed-legged in the dirt at the side of the house, staring numbly at the freshly-turned patch of ground that marked the spot where Laura's body lies buried. There are patterns traced out around him, three lines that spiral outward from one point directly in the centre of the grave, where an unfamiliar plant has taken root, delicate purple flowers fluttering in the breeze. "Aconitum." Derek says lowly from behind him. Stiles didn't hear his approach, which makes sense actually, because /werewolf/.

"Wolfsbane." He whispers to himself, but super-senses and stuff mean that Derek can hear him too. It had been driving him crazy with Scott, not having a moment to himself with the guy around, having it announced every time his heart-rate increased, or he forgot to put on deodorant. He doesn't know how he feels now that it's Derek who can undoubtedly smell the salt of the tears dampening his cheeks and clotting his eyelashes.

He doesn't know where Scott is, whether he's still in the house, slumped over in shock after the discovery that he's not alone anymore, that there are other out there besides the deranged /thing/ that bit him, or of he's run off into the forest to collect himself. Stiles hopes it’s the latter because he's feeling decidedly rattled, and feels justified in taking a little time to properly freak-out.

"I felt her die." Derek is saying now, voice husky and not as deep as Stiles would have thought it would be, "I was in Kansas, camping squatting in some old barn. She had been feeling...off for days so I was coming to get her but she took the car so I had to hitchhike. When she died it was like having a limb chopped off, or an organ ripped out. She was just gone and I was left torn and bleeding. I couldn't move for hours."

Stiles swallows dryly against the lump behind his tongue and it's a moment before he can respond, voice shaking, "So like, you guys have some sort of wolf-bond? Like Star Wars? 'Cause this whole thing is feeling rather disturbance in the force-esque." He knows how dark it is to be joking but he can't help it. Humor, sarcasm, talking, it's what he does when he's put in a situation he doesn't want to be in. Mask your weakness, he hopes Derek remembers this and doesn't think he's belittling his sister's death.

"She was pack." Derek says calmly, as if that is supposed to explain everything. It probably does if one has a foundation of knowledge about werewolves but all he knows is what he and Scott have figured out by trial and error so the word only brings up a hazy notion.

"Pack...like family. Your family was your pack." Something ark and ugly churns in Stiles' gut as his mind flashes to that day years ago, standing just a hundred yards from where he is now, behind a line of police tape. He hears the words echo in his head, the fire-chief and his father, heads bent to mutter about the ten people trapped in the basement, slowly burning, suffocating, a slow, painful death. He grips the fabric of his pants and remembers the haunted, hollowness in Derek and Laura's eyes, how sick they'd looked, not speaking a word to anyone for days.

"You should take your friend home." Derek says after a minute of the heaviest silence Stiles has ever had to suffer through, "He's waiting in your car."

Stiles twists at the waist to glare up at him. Derek's face is carefully blank in the way it never was before the fire. His eyes are glassy and unfocused, hovering somewhere over Stiles' shoulder. It makes him look like a stranger, it's a bit like losing his friend all over again and Stiles' throat feels so dry that he can't swallow which meant that he couldn't breath properly. He dragged in a ragged gasp and the expressionless mask cracked and Derek slides into spot behind him with supernatural grace, hand a familiar warmth under the collar of his jacket. "Don't...don't you think we should talk? About all of...this? I can't just waltz home like any other day, grab a snack, procrastinate on my essay as if this bomb hasn't just gone off and leveled the entire foundation of my life! I doubt I'll be able to cook dinner without cutting off something important, or get to sleep until the wee hours of the morning and that's only after tossing and turning myself to exhaustion!"

"Then order pizza. Write your essay some other day, and let yourself sleep in, think about what you know so far. Tomorrow is Saturday Stiles, come over when you wake up and we'll talk." his thumb rubbed along Stiles' hairline, fingers combing up against the bristles, "I don't want you to feel trapped in this, with me. It's a lot to take in and it can be scary I know, and if you sleep on it and decide you don't want to come back-"

"What, you think what? That I'll be scared off?" Stiles gapes at the older boy...man now, he guesses, since he turned twenty-one two months ago.

"I've seen it happen." Derek's voice is dull, his fingers slowly peeling away, "I remember...one of Uncle Peter's girlfriends, before he married Aunt Julie. It was serious, they were high-school sweethearts, dated for years, he was going to ask her to marry him and everything. But when he told her about what we are, she just left. Even after they'd shared their life for seven years she couldn't handle it."

Stiles grasps wildly behind him, managing to catch Derek's hand and tug it back to his head, holding it tightly to cup his skull. "No!" he yelped, "You don't get to decide what I can handle. I managed to handle your ass disappearing on me for years. I've done a pretty alright job handling Scott. And you know why?" he falters, grip on Derek's fingers tightening to the point where it probably hurt- or would have hurt a normal person. "Because...well because he's my best friend. And I don't care about Uncle Peter's old flame, /I/ have something called loyalty. I'm not going to just ditch you because you were...born a little different from everyone else."

A soft huff of laughter breezes against the side of his face as Derek shifts and flops down beside him, arm settling across Stiles' shoulders. "You make it sound like I have a disability or something."

"Dude you do kinda." Stiles grins, leaning to bump against his shoulder, "Your monthly problem, your little furry friend, the beast inside roaring to be unchained! Your puppy pal, your-"

"Shut up Stiles." Derek growls, shaking him roughly by the head, "I don't know why I put up with you."

It's a classic line between them, and Stiles responds automatically, "Oh please, you'd miss me if I were gone."

They both freeze. Derek's arm tenses and pulls away; this time Stiles doesn't stop him. "Stiles I-"

"Tomorrow it is!" he chirps, shooting to his feet, "Tomorrow is for talking, a good ol' fashioned bro-chat. Tomorrow. See you later. Tomorrow later. Okay leaving now bye." and he hurries away, trying vainly not to start visibly shaking.

After dropping Scott off at his house Stiles treats himself to a bubble bath. They have this spongy waterproof pillow that suctions onto the edge of the tub from when his mom was sick and still living at home. He gets the thing hooked up, runs the water scalding and dumps in about half of the tube of bubble soap. Then, because it's been a hell of a day and it's not even four o'clock, he swipes that double-fudge mocha chip ice cream that dad has stashed away in the garage freezer and eats the entire thing neck-deep in glorious suds.

He doesn't end up ordering take-out, instead scraping together a pretty tasty grilled cheese a la Stiles, with swiss and mozzarella between two slices of sourdough and a fine dusting of parmesan on the outside. He seran-wraps a sandwich for his dad and leaves it on the counter, heading up for an early bedtime.

He takes out the folder full of composite sketches and takes a step towards his trashcan before pausing, and instead spreads them out over his duvet. There's around a dozen posters, each one different in small ways, none of them right. He traces the sketched line of one of the more accurate one's nose. These are the only images he had of Derek, imperfect as they might be, and who knows how long he'll stick around this time.

No, that's a lie actually, Stiles has one other picture of Derek. It's the only drawing that Laura had deigned to show him, a pencil caricature of seventeen year-old Derek that she'd drawn just months before the fire. It exaggerated the spikes of his hair, shooting up half the page in black scribbles, his eyes like sideways teardrops were the only part of the piece that was coloured, a dash of green pencil crayon. Cartoon Derek wore a hyperbole of a scowl, thick caterpillar eyebrows scrunched together unhappily. A speech bubble leading from it's mouth declares "I am an insensitive dick who takes his friends for granted because of cheap hoes with more boob than brain. I deserve to eat poo forever."

She'd drawn it for him on a grey day in March. He had curled up on the purple bean-bag chair in her bedroom, watching the rain run down the window, fingers and lips dusted orange from the bag of Cheetos he was half-way through devouring. "And it was going to be so /awesome/!" he whined through a mouthful of cheesy goodness, "I've been planning this for weeks! My dad took the night off so he could drive us to the arena, he was going to buy us t-shirts and I would get the pretzels, I saved all the money I made covering Greenberg's paper-route when he was out with tonsillitis."

Laura hummed absently, chewing on the eraser of her pencil. She was stretched out across the sunshine yellow quilt on her bed, sketchpad open between her propped elbows. "I mean, I'd get it if we were just going to hang out and watch Wipeout like normal Fridays, but I was really excited about this concert."

"Stiles Stiles Stiles." Laura had sighed, adding a few lines to the page in front of her, "My darling little brother is sixteen and discovering the joy that is the hormonal abyss of first romance. That little mantra that is tossed around so often, 'bros before hoes'? It's total bull. The pull of the female animal is irresistible. You'll jus have to get used to playing second fiddle to mystery girl." She punctuated that with a vicious scribble.

"But it's not fair!" Stiles was fully aware that his pout looked more bratty than sympathy-invoking but he stubbornly kept his lower lip curled downward, "He's my best friend and he's only been dating her for a week!"

"I know hon, but that's the way it works." She reached a sock-clad foot out to tap his shoulder, "You'll understand in a couple of years when you get a girlfriend, then Der-Der will get a taste of his own douche-baggery."

Stiles shook his head and stuffed his face so full of cheesies that he most likely looked like a fat orange chipmunk. The thought of skipping out on hanging out with Derek just to spend time with some girl was unimaginable. Sure there were a couple girls in his classes who he didn't mind, there was just so way that he'd ever have as much fun with them. Derek was smarter, funnier and better than anyone else, and he said as much to Laura, spraying orange bits in his zeal.

A /look/ crossed the older girl's face then, a flash of comprehension in her eyes as her mouth pinched into a tight little 'o'. "No I don't suppose you would have as much fun with them." She said after a minute, "You and Derek...your bond is definitely deeper than that."

Stiles crossed his arms, satisfied that he'd gotten her to understand so quickly. "Derek should absolutely give up on mystery girl," Laura continued, eyes fixed firmly on Stiles, "If only he could see how much more you care about him then she does." he nodded along eagerly. "He should dedicate more time to your relationship." She mused, "Seeing as you're the one who knows him best." Stiles grinned in agreement, "And then, when the two of you get married, I'll be both of your best man...woman...whatever."

"Yes exact- wait! What? Married? What the hell Laura, where did you get marriage out of that?"

"Oh I don't know Stiles," she rolled her eyes and went back to sketching, "Maybe between you dissing all the girls in your grade and waxing poetry about my brother's eyes?"

"I didn't..I never said anything about his eyes!" but they were pretty wicked, much more interesting than Stiles' boring brown, all neat hazel with flecks of green and gold. Very intense and awesomely cool.

"No you didn't," Laura attested, "But it was a near thing Stiles." She sighed heavily and snapped her book closed, sitting up and sliding down to sit on the floor beside him, "And it's totally okay, if you like him I mean. I don't think anyone would even be that surprised."

"You mean-" Stiles voice cracked, it had been doing that a lot lately, "You mean _like_ like?"

"Yes, _like_ like. So do you?"

"No! Of course not!" except now Stiles was questioning ever conception about relationships he ever had. His mind zipped to the tentative mingling that his peers had just started doing, how Jackson Whitmore and Amy Roberts had held hands all through lunch and most of the conversations between the other boys had turned from sports and movies to which girls were 'hot' and which weren't. How the words 'queer' and 'gay' had started to be tested on the tongues of some of the guys, throwing pointed looks in Danny Mahealani's direction.

Stiles hadn't really put much thought into which girls were hot, not beyond admiring the iridescent hue of Lydia Martin's hair none of them stood out to him as anything special. He knew that they were pretty, but he'd never had any real desire to hold their hands or snuggle or kiss them like his fellows had. Girls were soft and small and smelled good, often louder and cleaner than boys. Stiles had always assumed that the wanting to date them stuff would eventually just set in, wake up one day and suddenly want to touch them. He was just a late bloomer.

So he took a minute to close his eyes and picture Lydia Martin naked. He'd seen her in her swimsuit in gym classes at the pool, the regulation black one-piece clinging to every one of her blossoming curves. Her legs had been neatly compact and pale, her hair tumbling in a strawberry-blonde cascade over her bare shoulders when she peeled her swim-cap off. Stiles thought that she was the prettiest girl in the school but he didn't seem to want to kiss her.

With growing discomfort her replaced Lydia with Danny, who he actually had seen nude before, in the showers after gym and at one very memorable birthday party last year. Danny was a cool guy, he had lived in Hawaii until grade two so that was awesome. He had long, lanky limbs and tanned skin. His hair was brown and always looked very clean and well cared for. He'd had his first real growth spurt over the summer, making him one of the tallest kids in their grade, and he had the beginnings of muscles fleshing out his body. In the change-room Jackson had shoved him playfully, shaking loose water from his disheveled hair, trickling down his long neck, over the ridge of his collarbone and over one dark nipple, small and sharp from the cool air. He raised his lithe arm over his head to run a deodorant into the hallow, ruffling strands of dark, adolescent thin hair there. When he inhaled a laugh, white teeth flashing, Stiles could see the outline of his ribcage. Jackson had grabbed him, hooking an arm round his neck to pull him down against his bare chest, a friendly noogie between pals. Their skin had contrasted nicely, tan against creamy pale, Danny's neck caught in the crease of his friend's elbow, face pressed against his pecs, grinning lips parted slightly against damp skin. The rough-housing had loosened the towels around their waists, and Danny had to dart a slim hand down to catch his before it slipped too low, but not in time to hide the dark thatch of new hair between the jut of his hips, the slight curve of flesh amongst the curls-

Stiles gasped raggedly and dragged himself out of his musing, eyes wide in horror. Laura was saying his name and he tried to focus on her. "Wha-what?" he choked out, "Sorry, what were you saying?"

"Oh not much, just asking if you were absolutely sure that you have no homosexual urges pertaining to my baby brother."

"I-I" Stiles stuttered, Derek in Jackson's place now, and Stiles in Danny's. It was a familiar enough scene, on the couch beating each other up via video game avatars that turned into them wrestling for the remote. Derek was older and bigger so he always won, pinned Stiles so that he was helpless, unable to escape his friend's superior bulk. Eventually he'd concede and stop struggling, but Derek would gloat his victory, staying crushed up half on top of Stiles, warm and big and smelling like the best thing ever. "I don't, I don't know." He whispered, staring down into the empty depth of the Cheetos bag.

"Mmhmm." Laura hummed, reaching behind her to grab her sketch pad and flip it open to the page she'd been working on. She didn't say anything more, just drew. Stiles took a moment to compose himself and then peered over her shoulder. Surprisingly she let him look, intent upon capturing the curve of a new figure's voluptuous hip. For a second Stiles' heart stopped because he thought that Laura somehow _knew_ , the woman she was drawing did look eerily like Kate Argent. But the caricature was simply a woman with long blonde hair and humorously large breasts, the stereotypical image of a cougar.

"I'm a man stealing hussie," He read out loud, voice steadier now, "And I need to get my home-wrecking hands off of Stiles' future hubby."

"Whatever happens," Laura said with a soft smile, "However this fling ends, you'll still be Derek's best friend. Girlfriends come and go, a guy like you, Stiles Stilinski, you're a keeper and he knows it. Just be there for him, okay? He'll see the light soon enough."

So Stiles had taped the doodle to the inside cover of his math textbook and adjusted to having a timeshare on his best friend. It was tough, dealing with the revelation that he might possibly _like_ like Derek and not even being able to spend enough time with the guy to figure it out. But Laura's little pep-talk had been surprisingly effective so he kept repeating her words to himself whenever he was left high and dry in favour of secret date-nights. Hell he even acted as cover story for Derek's forbidden romance, which really just added insult to injury. _It'll be over soon_. he told himself again and again for three months, _and when it is everything will go back to normal_.

"So, have you been to see Peter?" Stiles asks the next morning, having woken up after a mere four hours of sleep to sped to the Hale house like he has something to prove. And he sort of does because apparently Derek is riddled with insecurity now, going by the mixture of surprise and relief that appears on his face when Stiles pulls up. Like he had actually expected Stiles to just wash his hands of him.

"Snuck in after visiting hours." Derek responds, pushing a chipped mug of instant coffee into Stiles' hands, "I...told him about Laura."

Ouch. And here the normal response would be 'how did he take it?' but Stiles can't really say that because of the whole persistent vegetative state and everything. What does one say in this case? He settles on "Uh...and what about Kate?" because it's a logical procession, Uncle Peter and Kate Argent being basically the only two people whom Derek would want to see.

But apparently he's missed something because Derek goes all rigid and literally snarls at him, "What about her?"

Stiles had been in the middle of taking a sip of coffee to disguise his awkwardness and the absolute ferocity in his friend's voice unbalances his tentative sip-only-the-foam approach, making him inhale a mouthful of scalding liquid. He gasps for air for a minute, trying to sooth his burnt esophagus, "Uhm...have you visited her? Because you know, she was kind of your girlfriend and stuff?"

"The Argents are gone." Derek says icily, eyes intense in a way that was probably menacing, "They left town the week after I did."

"Yeah well, they're back now. They moved back into their old house."

" _When?_ "

"Uhm...end of August? Just in time for Allison to start the school year."

"They're not supposed to be here!" Derek hisses, jumping to his feet and beginning to pace back and forth like his life depends on it, "Have you seen them? Talked to them? What do they want?"

"Yeah I've talked to them, dude, Scott and Allison are like, a _thing_ , and they're sickeningly cute. It's hard to avoid. We can barf about it together at family dinners."

"Scott's dating her?" Derek all but roars and that's really disconcerting. Stiles isn't scared of the guy, he hasn't been scared of him at all despite everything, but he is getting concerned.

"Holy moly yes, he is! Calm down dude, Allison's cool." he tries to appease, thoroughly baffled. Is this some sort of wacked-out territorial thing? Once one wolf dates a chick the whole family is off limits or something?

"No Stiles, nothing about this is _cool_. This can't happen again. I need to go talk to him." and suddenly he is grabbing his jacket off the arm of the couch and turning to storm out of the house and supposedly track Scott down by scent or something, which is a really bad plan because the poor guy is sort of a little terrified of Derek. Plus, he's more than likely with Allison and he doesn't think that the girl will appreciate being told that she _isn't cool and can't happen_.

"Yeah, you're right, this isn't cool. So come hear and explain to me exactly why you're freaking out."

Derek stops at the door, still exuding fury and turmoil, but Stiles pitches his voice in the earnest plea that had won him many an argument over the years. Derek growls like a surly bear but slinks back to the couch and perches on the edge, not relaxing a muscle. "So," Stiles says, inching closer, "Why are you acting like a crazy person? I thought you'd be happy to see the girlfriend again."

"Ex-girlfriend." Derek grits out, "And there is _nothing_ good about the Argents coming back. _Nothing_ Stiles."

Okay so he'd need really been in the know about Derek's scandalous affair, but this is just extreme. Stiles had been the only one even aware of the relationship, as a twenty-five year-old woman dating a highschool senior in a small town was a sure-fire way to become centre stage in the local gossip mill. As far as Stiles knew, Derek and Kate had been going strong right up until the fire. She'd even come to the funeral, with an unfamiliar old man. Maybe something had happened? A fight or something in the days before? That seemed like a reasonable reason for Derek not to want to see her, if she'd broken up with her right after his entire family had died.

Derek is breathing hard, and the fingers griping the couch cushions glint with claws. "Okay, okay, Argents aren't cool. Now explain to me why exactly, before you run off to break Scott's wolfy heart. And use your words man." he added when Derek starts to growl again.

It takes him a good minute to begin; Stiles can see him gathering his thoughts and when he finally speaks the words come slowly. "Kate...Kate knew about us."

"You told her?" _and not me_ goes unsaid but it hangs between them. Stiles' ribcage constricts painfully.

"No I didn't." Derek says, frustration colouring his tone. He stops to think again, brow furrowed unhappily. "There are certain groups," he says carefully, "Groups who are aware of the existence of our kind. Some of the first nations bands have known for centuries. There are some who are hostile, but a small few have formed alliances with the packs that share their territory. My Grandmother for example, her tribe has been friendly for generations and that's how she met my Grandfather."

"Granny Rachel wasn't a werewolf?"

"She was human until the day she died. Her choice. But then there are groups who aren't so friendly. They're known as hunters."

"Like Buffy!" Stiles bursts out before he can slap on that filter that his dad always talks about.

Derek shoots him a long-suffered look and replies "Like Buffy. Except with Kevlar. And automatic assault rifles. And militarized all-terrain vehicles, specialized interrogation facilities, a well-organized union and an all consuming hatred of werewolf kind."

"A werewolf hunters union. You've got to be pulling my leg."

"I'm really not. They have a great dental plan."

Stiles boggles at him, aware that this is winding up to be a very serious conversation, but unable to let this pass by without comment. "What, and like, paid vacation days?"

Derek glowers and says, "Yes, they have a very fair system. Except for the part where they're paid to kill us Stiles, focus."

"Yes, right. Hostile non-Buffy hunters. I'm focused."

"Kate knew about us because the Argents are one of the oldest hunter clans that exists today, dating all the way back to the old world wolves. This branch came over from France in the late seventeenth century and spread throughout New France. There is a large group still set up in Quebec, and the Louisiana branch merged with the Creole hunters, they're some of the most vicious and indiscriminant killers in the world. They wiped out the whole state and are working their way through the neighboring packs."

"Wait...and you _dated_ one of them? Are there not rules about that?"

"There are. Why do you think I worked so hard not to let anyone know?"

"Because...you said...it was the age difference! Your parents wouldn't have approved!"

"That isn't untrue. If they were able to see past the ancient blood feud they would have flipped out about the age difference. I didn't lie to you Stiles, not when I could help it."

"Okay we can talk about that whole matter another time. Right now are you going to explain to my why you thought it was a good idea to go out with a murderer, or is this conversation going nowhere?"

Derek rubs both hands over his face and hunches over as if all he wants to do is curl up in fetal position and sink into the floor. It breaks Stiles' heart a little but he really needs to understand so he resists the urge to reach out. "I...I guess it was a mix of reasons." Derek's voice is muffled against his palms, "She was beautiful, and older and she flirted with me. Mostly though it was the fact that she knew about me. With her I didn't have to hide anymore. I'd spent my whole life hiding Stiles and it gets...stifling. It's like, I can jump higher and run faster than anyone else at school but my parents would always tell me how I had to hold back and blend in. Every lacrosse game I had to beat back the instinct to just let loose and run and score and win. Kate didn't mind me being me, she even liked it, encouraged me to show off. It was amazing."

Everything about Stiles hurts and he feels flushed with so many conflicting emotions it's dizzying. There's jealousy and understanding, anger and confusion, sympathy and dread. "I wish," he whispers, not looking at Derek in case he sees how wet his eyes are except that wolf senses damnit do he definitely knows anyway, "I wish that you'd told me."

Derek's head snaps up and his expression is one of a tortured man, "I couldn't." he says, "Stiles I...I just _couldn't_."

"Why not? I wouldn't have cared! No wait I would have cared, but in a good way! I cared about _you_ Derek, and you being a werewolf wouldn't have changed that! Do you really doubt that?"

"No.." but his voice lacked conviction. "Not...not really. It wasn't that, I wanted to tell you. But if I had I would have been putting you in so much danger. If I had I might have lost you too."

"That's ridiculous-"

"No it's not!" Derek snarls, slamming his foot down and causing the floor to creak ominously. "I was so naive and stupid, I never thought anything would actually happen. I thought she loved me but she didn't. She killed them Stiles, she killed them all."

"Wha?" surly he doesn't mean...! "But it was an accident, a gas leak! The reports all say-"

"The reports are all wrong." Derek says tonelessly, and he looks like something has drained all of his energy now, "They're covering it up, even thought she broke the code and killed innocents. It's because she's part of the main line, a direct descendent of the original family. The whole thing is a lie, a house full of werewolves, somebody would have smelled the gas in plenty of time to get everyone out."

"But why would she-"

"Because she's a psychopath. She isn't...she's not normal. No ordinary human could lie like she did, without a single sign. She's twisted. If I'd told you and she found out you knew she would have come after you."

"You don't know that." Stiles protests weakly.

"Yes, I do. I wanted to tell you Stiles but I do not regret that I didn't. If you weren't here I don't know what I'd do. After Laura..." He trails off, hands falling limply into his lap. His voice is agonized, "I'm sorry." It's as if the entire bulk of Derek's twenty-one year old body has collapsed in on itself, his chin ducked to his chest, legs pulled close protectively and arms limp at his sides. Stiles' mind flashes to the day of the fire, after school at the station, and two teenagers who just wanted their parents back.

"Don't you dare," he says unsteadily, "You are not allowed to say sorry." and he flops sideways so that he's halfway in Derek's lap, arms tight around his slumped shoulders.

"But Stiles-"

"No." he whispers, pressing his cheek hard against the ball of one firm shoulder. Derek gives in and leans into the embrace, his stubble rasping at the sensitive side of Stiles' neck as he inhaled deeply. They really do have a lot more to talk about, and Derek isn't getting off scot-free for leaving like he did, but for now Stiles has no desire to push any further, just holds on as securely as he can and pretend that nothing will ever separate them again.


End file.
